So we look eagerly through the door that is opened in heaven as those who are looking into their future home.  That is what we all are striving for—­presumably.  We are consciously selecting out of life precisely those elements, are centering on those interests, which have eternal significance and are imperishable values.  As we travel along the Pilgrim Way it is with hearts uplifted and stimulated by the Vision of the end.  We advance as seeing Him Who is invisible.  We live by hope, knowing that we shall attain no enduring satisfaction until we pass through the gates into the City, and mingle with the throng of worshippers who sing the song of Moses and of the Lamb.  Therefore our life is always forward-looking and optimistic:  because we are sure of the end, we wait for it with patience and endurance, thankful for all the experience of the Way.  As the years flow by we do not look back on them with regret as the unrenewable experiences of a vanished youth, but we think of them as the bearers of experiences by which we have profited, and of goods which we have safely garnered, waiting the time when their stored values can be fully realised.

Over all the saints whom the Church has seen rejoicing in the heavenly life, rises the form of Mary, Mother of God.  S. John’s vision of the “great sign in heaven” in its primary meaning has, no doubt, reference to the Church itself; but the form of its symbolism would be impossible if there were not a secondary reference to the Blessed Virgin Mary.  It is the thought of her and of her office as Mother of the Redeemer that has determined the form of the vision.  The details are too clear to permit of doubt, and such has been the constant mind of Catholic interpreters.

And how else than as Queen of the heavenly host should we expect her to be represented?  What does the Church teaching as to sanctity imply?

It implies the enjoyment of the Beatific Vision.  The normal Christian life begins in the sacramental act by which the regenerate child is made one with God, being made a partaker of the divine nature, and develops through sacramental experience and constant response to the will of God to that spiritual capacity which is the medium of the Beatific Vision and which we call sanctity or purity.  “The pure in heart shall see God.”

But the teaching of the Church also implies that there is a marvellous diversity in the sanctity of the members of the Body of Christ.  Each saint retains his personal characteristics, and his sanctity is not the refashioning of his character in a common mould but the perfecting of his character on its own lines.  We sometimes hear it said that the Christian conception of heaven is monotonous, but that is very far from being the fact.  It is only those conceptions of heaven which have excluded the communion of saints, and have thought of heaven as the solitary communion of the soul with God; which have in other words, excluded the notion of human society from heaven, which have